Brilliant. I was working in the Midwest when Walmart’s destructive march across the nation’s heartland was just gaining strength. This visualization looks like the nuclear explosion map in old movies, and the imagery — if over the top — is thought-provoking.

Google is pointing from its home page today to a page about World Tuberculosis Day and that, in turn, points to the Stop TB Partnership, a nonprofit organization. A worthy cause, and good for Google for pointing to it.

Consider the power of this endorsement. I suspect that with this single link, Google is channeling more money to the organizations that want to end TB than the sum of all their previous campaigns. This is power of a breathtaking kind.

Chris Anderson (Columbia University): What’s So Hard About Local?Where should our foundation dollars go? Perhaps they should go towards assuring that the so-called “lowly” (and yet, so oddly difficult to fund either a peer-produced or market based substitute for!! so much for lowly!) beat reporter, police bureau chief, crime reporter, city hall reporter, can survive.

The Obama administration promises it will be accountable in how it spends our (children’s) money in the new stimulus legislation. On the Recovery.Gov site you’ll see, under the heading “Accountability and Transparency,” some strong rhetoric:

This is your money. You have a right to know where it’s going and how it’s being spent.

So far so good, and the bill allocates some $84 million for a Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, the task of which is to follow the money.

That notion — follow the money — is what much of the best journalism has been all about in recent decades. News organizations and freelancers have uncovered all kinds of malfeasance and nonfeasance by watching how money got spent.

Recovery.gov aims, in part, to show where every dollar is going from the stimulus appropriation. In theory, this will enable an army of average folks to look into the data and flag inappropriate (and good) uses of the money.

But that $84 million will pay some professionals who know how to investigate, and they’re going to be a first line of defense in ensuring that the fraud and abuse — guaranteed to occur no matter how well-meaning the management of this enormous pot of money — will be caught.

The inspector general and his team would be smart to reaize that they could be hiring some unemployed (or under-employed or soon-to-be unemployed) people who have some of the skills we need in those positions. I’m talking about journalists, many of whom have been serving as watchdogs for a long time.

They’ll need some updated training. But a lot of them have the temperment we need for this task. Most vital: They are relentless diggers.

We need their skills in lots of ways. This could be one. The journalism business may be imploding, but these journalists still have a great deal to offer.

New York Times: Hey Kids, Let’s Put on a Blog!Starting today, The Local is an online news site for these communities. But if we build it right together, The Local will be something much more: a glorious if cacophonous chorus of your voices singing the song of life itself in these astoundingly varied and vibrant neighborhoods.

With your input, The Local will tell stories that matter: crime and politics and culture and civic life and everything else. Some stories will be snapshots, mere moments. Others will unfold over days or weeks or marking periods — the birth pangs of a food coop or a high school newspaper, the aftermath of a crime, and, as the unstoppable wave of local gentrification crashes into the unstoppable wave of global economic meltdown, an ever-growing tale of loss and struggle.

The Times’ move here is critically important. It’s long overdue, as such a thing would be at any newspaper, but at least it’s finally happening. I’ll be watching closely to see how this develops.

What I don’t see, so far, is any serious indication of the parallel media universe that exists outside the Times’ perception. If this “local” site doesn’t point widely to the community blogs and other media, it will simply reinforce the old-style media view of the past. I’m confident that the paper understands this.

One question, of course, is whether (a) this will make any money for the newspaper, and, if so, (b) whether the Times will share any wealth created by the community in this endeavor. Let’s wait for (a) before we worry too much about (b).

Hearst Corporation announced today that its San Francisco Chronicle newspaper is undertaking critical cost-saving measures including a significant reduction in the number of its unionized and nonunion employees. If these savings cannot be accomplished within weeks, Hearst said, the Company will be forced to sell or close the newspaper.

We’re approaching an end-game of the current leveraged newspaper business. It’s going to be seriously more ugly from now on at many big papers.

Forbes: Boss Got Raise As Philly Papers Tanked. As the parent company of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News slid toward the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing it made over the weekend, one employee did well on the pay front: CEO Brian P. Tierney.

How disgusting is this?

The arrogance of the people like Tierney just compounds the woes of the newspaper business. He and his management team are facing the perfect storm when it comes to the revenue model for newspapers, but they don’t have to add to the damage with their greediness.

These are not small issues. The journalists and truck drivers and printers and salespeople at the Philadelphia have every right to feel betrayed.

UPDATE: The bosses have recognized reality and rolled back the raises. (Given that they did a leveraged buyout of the company, their salaries remain way too high, but that’s another issue.)